The Jim Thorpe Area School District rolled out their new technology initiative by registering iPads to Penn-Kidder students Thursday morning. The distribution continued today at the other schools.

This effort is the latest move in the district’s Project OLE (Olympian One-to-One Learning Environment), which will provide each student in the district with a piece of Apple technology. Kindergarten through sixth-graders will receive iPads. Upper-level students will be provided with MacBooks.The district has a four-year lease with Apple for $847,349. The board also has the option to buy the equipment at the end of the lease for $1.“They’re excited, because now they get their one-on-one. All the other years, we had to share our iPads. We only had eight per class, and now we have one for everybody. I told them this morning, and they all cheered,” first-grade teacher Pam Demyanovich said.This project is the first of its kind within the Carbon County school districts. The distribution of the devices is the culmination of years of work within the district, researching the best approach for Project OLE.“It’s been a journey. It’s not something you can do overnight. We did research, we did site visits to exemplary schools and school districts down in Virginia and Maryland, some places in Pennsylvania. We took the best pieces from the places that we’ve seen, and we saw the success that they had. So we modeled the program using those best practices from those districts,” said Jerome A. Brown Jr., director of Technology & Information Services.Level playing fieldPenn-Kidder Principal David McAndrew Jr. sees the initiative as a chance to provide all students with integral modern technology, without the prohibitive expense.“There are a lot of schools right now, throughout the state, where the students are living in poverty, they don’t have the opportunity to have iPads and computers. We’re really leveling the playing field by giving everyone these devices and giving everyone the appropriate education,” McAndrew said.“We’ve been a longtime Apple district. The infrastructure, the support that Apple gives as far as education is top-notch. They don’t just sell you a device and move on. They brought us the sites, they have come in for training for our teachers. As they say, education is in their DNA, and they’ve really proven that,” Brown said.The iPads can be used for a wide range of subjects.“Typing skills, learning their alphabet, learning their numbers. … You throw this at them, they’re not thinking that they’re learning. When you give them something like this, they learn their alphabet, they learn their numbers, and they don’t know that,” Jim Thorpe high school computer technician Stacey Tomko said. “When learning is fun, it makes it better for everyone all around.”Demyanovich is looking forward to using the new technology and contributing to the reading program.“Well, with our new reading series that we have, there are a lot of components on the website that they can use. If they have Internet at home, they can go on and read the story at home instead of taking home the actual book,” Demyanovich said.The iPads come with the Apple creative suite, which contains a number of applications that can benefit students in core classes and more.“We may not be able to afford 100 instruments in the music classroom, but digitally, you can have 100 instruments they can experiment and play with. You can compose music with Garage Band, it’s just drag and drop and touch,” Brown said.Fifth-grader Kinga Malinowski is looking forward to working with additional programs.“I think it’s a really good way to learn. They’re different websites we can use on it,” Malinowski said. “Accelerated Reader, I like to use that. It helps me with my reading. I could take tests on it to see how I’m doing.”Fifth-grader Ethan Freer said, “You don’t have to carry around a lot of books, so that will be easier.”Students will learn about maintaining an appropriate online presence.“Every student is going to be taught the concepts of being a good digital citizen, how to conduct themselves online, the consequences for not doing so,” Brown said. Subjects like appropriate language, online bullying, and more will be addressed throughout the school year.Superintendent Brian J. Gasper is looking forward to improved learning, with a focus on having teachers seek out the apps that will best compliment their teaching.“We want teachers to come to us and say, ‘I really feel this app is best for our third grade math curriculum,’ or whatever may be the case.They’re definitely loaded well for now, but we want to put a lot of the work in the hands of the teachers who are experts with the children,” Gasper said.